Written By: Cyrus Chiang
Ratings
Plot: 3/10
Directing: 5/10
Stunt Choreography: 5/10
Cinematography: 6.5/10
Visual Effects: 3/10
Sound Design: 4/10
Soundtrack: 7/10
Editing: 6.5/10
Costume: 5/10
Overall: 4.5/10
The Dark Descent of Live-Action Remakes
Disney has a reputation for making unnecessary live action adaptations of classic animations such as Aladdin or Sleeping Beauty, and over time each film has declined in quality. Before, there was a noticeable deviation from the plot, unafraid to explore the creative potential of each story, most notably in Maleficent. Maleficent followed a different narrative, portraying the entire sequence of events from the perspective of Maleficent, the “antagonist”. Unfortunately, this was not the case with The Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid was a soulless, carbon copy of the animated film with some minor changes to better promote the political agendas of Disney.
Copy and Paste
The entire plot was simply copy and pasted from the animation to the new movie. Disney had 34 years to explore the vast creative possibilities of The Little Mermaid, yet failed to do anything such. It felt as though it was nothing more than a husk of the original fairytale-magic kids so desperately longed for. The original film depicted a thrilling tale of a free-spirited mermaid desperate to explore beyond the confines of the seven seas, seeking to find true love in a concise and simple manner, clocking in at just 1 hour and 23 minutes. Now, the film is 2 hours 15 minutes long, with a nearly identical plot and nothing to justify the extra 1 hour of run time. Many scenes were slowed down, which didn’t match the fast-paced theme of exploration and adventure, which brings me to another key blunder that Disney made during the production of this movie: the demographic.
A Lack of a Target Demographic
Disney didn’t really know who this movie was actually for. The reason why I say this is because children don’t care about stories being “politically correct”. They don’t care about whether or not you’ve ticked the box of including multiple ethnicities. They don’t care about women empowerment or your political bias. They want a simple, entertaining story that lets them leave the theater smiling, dreaming about entering a world filled with colorful fish and beautiful cities underwater. The long, drawn-out scenes with painfully dull dialogue would kill anyone’s attention span, much less children’s attention span. The pacing in The Little Mermaid was horrendously off, and after an hour, I was having trouble sitting still because everything felt slow and monotone. It felt as though Disney was making this movie for the adults under the guise of a kids movie.
Sacrificing the Theme for a Better Political Image
Disney seemed hell-bent on promoting female empowerment and to show that women can be strong and powerful. And that's great, don't get me wrong. Female empowerment is an important message to promote. Except they chose the wrong movie to promote this idea. Mulan, despite being a horrible movie, would be a great movie to promote this idea, as one of the prominent themes of the story is that women are just as capable as men. Mulan is a feel-good movie, empowering and motivational, which is essentially the correct focus. In the original iteration of The Little Mermaid, the focus was never on Gender Equality and women empowerment. By making the Prince docile and passive, having Ariel do all the work and save the day by impaling Ursula, it essentially breaks the balance between the two characters. In the original animation, Prince Eric repays the debt that he owed Ariel when she saved him from drowning by saving her from Ursula’s wrath, creating a harmonious, balanced relationship between the two and giving the entire story a nice, satisfying ending. In the new live action movie, the character development and chemistry between the two leading roles is gone. It felt as though Prince Eric had to rely on Ariel for everything, and the film provided absolutely no reason why Ariel should even be with him.
The… CGI???
I’m not gonna spend too much time on the CGI but it was horrendous. Flounder went from a bright yellow, timid fish to a lifeless fish. Flounder genuinely appeared dead the entire movie, and I was half-convinced that the production crew taped a dead fish from the local fish market onto a blue pole and named it Flounder. In fact, a massive problem in this movie was the loss of expression in each CGI’d character. It is difficult to connect to a character when they are literally just a talking crab, voice filled with emotion but no facial expression to match. This sacrificed emotional relatability between the audience and character for a semi-realistic image of a crab, fish and bird. Additionally, the lighting in many of the scenes seemed displeasing and superficial, in particular the underwater scenes.
Awkwafina.
I, by no means, hate Awkwafina, however her portrayal of Scuttle was quite possibly one of her worst performances. Nothing about Scuttle was likable, from the scattered, pointless dialogue, comedic lines that fell flat, or the rap. Scuttle’s rap was absolutely horrible, and adding on Awkwafina’s raspy monotone really only made me hate the rap more.
Conclusion
This movie does have some nice bits to it, such as some creative transitions and overall decent soundtrack (disregarding Awkwafina’s rap). The majority of cast members are quite talented at singing, especially Ariel (Halle Bailey) and Eric (Jonah Hauer-King). Additionally, Melissa McCarthy played the role of Ursula quite well, giving the best performance in this movie. However, these small accomplishments cannot redeem the abundant flaws peppered throughout the film and the future of Disney live-action adaptations looks quite bleak. As such I wouldn’t recommend watching this movie in theaters or even at all because honestly, your time is probably better spent watching the classics.
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